Unclear On The Concept

So this poor guy, Robert Dziekanski, flew from his native Poland to Canada to see his Mom. He didn't speak English or French, and after a long day of travelling then an over nine hour runaround at the Vancouver airport from a whole bunch of people whose most commonly spoken phrase appears to be "that's not my job", he got confused, frustrated, and disoriented. Eventually Robert got agitated, the police were called, he got Tasered, and he died on the airport floor. His Mom had already gone home during his nine hour wait, unaware that he was even in the airport and thinking he must have missed his flight.

Now, I don't know the full details of what took place, and I'm not in the habit of second-guessing police officers. They aren't all angels by any means, but I generally give them the benefit of the doubt. This post is not about their actions, because I don't understand the situation well enough to comment on their actions. Not many people do, which is why there's an inquiry going on.

However, I can certainly comment on the logic expressed by the guy in this article. Robert Ginter is the "airside safety officer" at the airport where Robert Dziekanski (and you better believe I'm using copy-and-paste for that name, instead of typing it out) died on the floor. He's the man who decided not to dispatch an emergency response services (ERS) team to see if Dziekanski's life could be saved.

Ginter told an inquiry examining Dziekanski's death that the airport could have been caught flat-footed if ERS was dispatched while virtually the entire security and operations departments were already on-scene. "It would expose the airport on secondary issues. Our ability to respond to any other issue, whether it be a fire alarm, debris on the runway, any issue that required an operational response, we would not have had anyone to respond to that incident."

Translation: "If our emergency response teams are running around responding to emergencies, then they won't be available to respond to emergencies!"

You know what? This is too depressing even for me, and I don't feel like writing any more about it. If you don't get the problem here, then I can't help you.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of a huge electrical fish rolling down the street. I've never dropped acid, but I'm guessing this is what it would be like.